


A Candle Burns

by Elenothar



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s06e06 Abyss (Stargate), Episode: s07e02 Homecoming, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Ascension, Psychological Trauma, and Jack's unique method of coping with it, long overdue conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 07:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16132769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elenothar/pseuds/Elenothar
Summary: Daniel, newly descended, is recovering more and more of his memories. Jack is just waiting for the other shoe to drop.Daniel, though – Daniel can never leave well enough alone. It might as well be his middle name, Daniel Can’t-leave-well-enough-alone Jackson, PhD times three, or whatever number he’s up to now. Maybe he got another couple while he was off in glowy-land. Certainly had the time for it, what with all the non-interfering. If there’s a mystery, or even just an unanswered question, Daniel just keeps digging away at it until the universe bows to his whims. Which it usually does, eventually.Or: Jack and Daniel begin to deal with Ba'al's actions, and their own.





	A Candle Burns

**Author's Note:**

> This fic deals with the aftermath of Abyss - all the relevant warnings apply, though nothing is graphic.
> 
> Let me tell you all about the folly of writing fic set in a series I haven't even seen completely yet because this plot bunny would. not. leave. me. alone. I always thought there should be more fallout from that episode.

 

*

 

Jack O’Neill is good at Not Thinking About It. Always has been, mainly because far too often that ability was all that stood between him and a (permanent) loss of sanity. It’s not a surprise, really – he isn’t aware of anyone who had made it in Special Ops for longer than a year (and wasn’t borderline psychopathic) who wasn’t _very_ good at compartmentalising; impossible to do the job without it.

 

Daniel, though – Daniel can never leave well enough alone. It might as well be his middle name, Daniel Can’t-leave-well-enough-alone Jackson, PhD times three, or whatever number he’s up to now. Maybe he got another couple while he was off in glowy-land. Certainly had the time for it, what with all the non-interfering. If there’s a mystery, or even just an unanswered question, Daniel just keeps digging away at it until the universe bows to his whims. Which it usually does, eventually.

 

He has lived with the memories for months when Daniel returns from his foray into glowdom. Jack doesn’t think of it when they find Daniel, gone all native on not-the-lost-city-after-all planet, and they’re all distracted by the amnesia anyway. And the suspicion glaring at them from Daniel’s eyes, the sheer physicality of his not-deadness, and in Jack’s case, the way the blue robes make his pale skin shine and his eyes seem even more intense than usual.

 

But later, after Kelowna (that fucking planet again, once was more than _enough_ goddammit), after Daniel has started remembering, a cold feeling of dread creeps up Jack’s spine. Daniel is back, he should be happy, joyful, fucking ecstatic – and he is all of those things, he _is._ He’s just also going through every day waiting for the other shoe to drop because he’s barely been keeping himself together at the seams for months now. Daniel claims he remembers nothing from his time as an ascended, but Jack knows it’s only a matter of time. This is Daniel, after all. And Daniel wouldn’t let it lie.

 

Teal’c has started giving him pointed looks. Even Carter has noticed that he’s twitchier than usual, and she’s been buried in her lab with the latest ‘fascinating’ doodad for a week.

 

Jack doesn’t know whether he should be glad to be on stand-down while Daniel gets his bearings because this way his state of mind can’t fuck up a mission, or disappointed because it means there’s nothing distracting him from the precipice he’s standing on. Says too much about his life, really, to think that he’d prefer mortal peril over quiet time to think.

 

 

 

When the other shoe does drop, it’s in the commissary, in the middle of a team lunch which had devolved into fighting over the last piece of pie. He is holding one end of the plate, Carter the other, Teal’c’s eyebrows are doing that thing they do when he’s amused and Daniel –

 

Daniel is staring at the oil dispenser, eyes wide, unblinking, and between one heartbeat and the next Jack _knows_. After all, he’d noticed the resemblance himself, the first time he was back in the commissary after his stay at chez Ba’al, had fought through the fear and revulsion until he could look and not flinch, not react at all.

 

God fucking dammit.

 

He stands, metal chair legs scraping over concrete, and ignores the startled looks from everyone but Daniel, who’s still fixated on the oil dispenser.

 

“People to see, work to do,” he says, knowing that the smile he forces to his lips isn’t anywhere near reaching his eyes. “Catch you lot later.”

 

He makes his escape before anyone can get their mouth open. Well, before Carter can. Daniel is still busy remembering, and Teal’c looks as sympathetic as Teal’c ever outwardly looks, which means he probably has a good idea of what’s happening. He’s almost through the door, dodging around Feretti, when he hears Daniel call his name, a thread of almost-panic in his voice, followed by Teal’c’s quelling rumble.

 

He doesn’t stop.

 

Pity about the pie, though.

 

 

 

Teal’c corners Jack in the gym two hours later. Jack’s thunderous scowl and high rank had cleared out the smaller side gym and it’s just him in the stillness, wrapped hands impacting the punching bag with dull thuds. Teal’c moves less quietly than he usually does, but he needn’t have bothered. Jack’s senses are on such high alert that anyone passing by within ten metres plucks his spine like the string of the world’s most out of tune violin.

 

He leaves the bag swinging and heads for his water bottle, as if it would forestall whatever words Teal’c has deemed it necessary to say.

 

“I did not seek you out after you returned to us from Ba’al’s prison,” Teal’c says and something in Jack’s chest wrenches.

 

“T, _don’t_ – ”

 

But Teal’c continues, implacable, and anyone who has ever complained about Jack’s pig-headed stubbornness has never tried to dissuade a Jaffa from their chosen course.

 

“Perhaps I should have. I believed you needed the space and doubted you would have talked to me of your own volition, but we both know the cruelty of the Goa’uld.”

 

Jack looks up to find the selfsame darkness he sees in his own eyes too many mornings mirrored in Teal’c’s. But there’s understanding too, and kindness that Teal’c still sometimes believes himself void of.

 

“I should have offered my support openly.”

 

The words sink into Jack’s mind and the arms which now prop himself up from the wall, water bottle forgotten on the floor, shake with minute tremors. It’s easier to look away from his friend, to let his head hang between his biceps and feel the blood rush through his veins.

 

“You were the only one I _could_ have talked to.” Jack’s voice sounds thin to his own ears. “If I had let go, I wouldn’t have been able to stop. I needed to be functional.” Spit rasps past a suddenly dry throat. “Need.”

 

He can’t see or hear, but he knows Teal’c inclines his head. “A warrior’s burden,” he says in agreement, neither chastising nor proud.

 

Jack doesn’t move, listens to Teal’c’s footsteps recede towards the door, unsurprised when they halt in the doorway.

 

“DanielJackson will seek answers.”

 

He closes his eyes.

 

“Yes, he will.”

 

 

*

 

 

That night, he wakes with a scream in his throat. The bed around him is damp with sweat and his uneven breath shatters the stillness. The bedside clock reads 02:00. It takes his heart ten minutes to return to a steady rhythm and by the time his pulse has calmed he knows he isn’t going back to sleep tonight. Movements jerky but efficient, he strips the bed, the pillow, the duvet and stuffs it all in the washing machine. People have done weirder things than laundry at 0200 in the morning, and it gives his hands something to do so he can pretend they’re not shaking still.

 

He’s getting too old for this. Or maybe age has nothing to do with it, and isn’t that an even more depressing possibility.

 

When the machine is running, he sinks down onto the couch and finds a hockey game he’d recorded weeks ago. He has already watched it but that hardly matters. His focus is scattered, thoughts intruding where they aren’t wanted even when he tries to pay attention. The heavy quilt he’d dragged over himself from the foot of the couch barely touches the cold in his limbs.

 

He closes his eyes, just for a moment, and instead of Ba’al’s smug face all he can see is the pale, sickly light of the sarcophagus.

 

There are shades to trauma, and at the hands of Ba’al Jack had discovered a new one, that no human on earth had known to guard against. One side of his mouth curls in derisive amusement. _A toast to pioneering_. When he’d returned, outwardly tired but mostly hale, they hadn’t known to look for the invisible cracks below the obvious fractures; the fault-lines now running deep within. No one at the SGC had witnessed his slow erosion in captivity, and imagination only goes so far before the mind rebels. Not that it would’ve made much of a difference. Even back then he’d been aware that medical stand-down for reasons of ‘psychological disturbance’ was a weak threat, unless he _visibly_ went off the deep end. His skills aren’t anywhere near as unique and valuable as Carter’s and Daniel’s, but simply by having gone through the gate for longer than any other military personnel and holding SG-1 together for most of that time he’s still too valuable to let go. He has no illusions that if he tried to retire now, he’d be blocked from all directions. And as long as he doesn’t screw up his missions more than SGC-usual and _seemed_ to be coping, the powers that be turned a blind eye – even Hammond. They can’t afford not to.

 

So he’d put it all away, made the memories hazy with mental barriers and trained himself not to think about that time. Sought out all the new triggers until panic faded to discomfort and he was back to functioning as well as he ever did. Mostly.

 

And there could be no exceptions, so Probably-not-a-hallucination-Daniel, with his insistence that Jack could ascend, his _presence_ , his refusal to end Jack’s torment the only way that Jack could see, had been tucked away with everything else – the pain and despair, the fractured splinters, the _breaking_.

 

Jack’s sightless eyes stare at the screen in front of him. Three players are in a scrummage, shouts coming from the loudspeakers that he doesn’t hear.

 

This, this whole thing, _incapacitation_ , was the reason he’d locked it all away in the first place, but now the walls are tumbling down and he can already hear the doorbell ring, hours in the future. He needs to sleep, but can’t. He needs to get his fucking act together, but it’s like trudging through Antarctica in a snow storm. Around him, the world is grey and unreal, as if he’s a couple of really important steps removed from reality and he just lets his mind float there and tries hard not to think words like _dissociation_ and _headcase_.

 

Eventually he dozes off on the couch, startling awake every few minutes to rub at gritty eyes, until it’s finally morning.

 

 

 

 

The doorbell rings. Jack sets his jaw, heaves himself up from the sofa and goes to let Daniel in. Daniel’s poker face has become much better over the years – if Jack didn’t know him quite so well he might’ve been fooled into thinking the man is entirely at ease, just dropping by for their usual pizza and hockey game night.

 

His tone of voice though, is always a give-away. An oral guy, is Daniel.

 

“Jack,” Daniel says quietly, the kind of weariness threading through the single word that has nothing to do with lack of sleep. He has probably spent the last few hours repeatedly talking himself in and out of coming to Jack’s. Daniel’s like Carter there – never met a situation he couldn’t overthink.

 

Jack jerks his head. “Come inside.”

 

He heads to the kitchen and the still warm coffee pot. Daniel takes the mug silently, fingers curling around its warmth while Jack leans back against the fridge, enjoying the chill on his feverish skin.

 

Three minutes later, Daniel still hasn’t made a move to actually drink any of the coffee, just stares into the liquid’s murky depths pensively.

 

“I remember.”

 

Jack shrugs, non-commitally, anticipating Daniel’s glare. “I always did say the commissary is hazardous.”

 

Daniel obliges as expected, eyes fiery. “I _also_ remember that you’re not all right.” If they’d been standing further apart Jack might’ve missed the minute shiver Daniel can’t quite suppress, the shadow of memory crawling across lighter times. “I don’t think anyone could be, after that.”

 

Jack crosses his arms, defensive in the way only Daniel ever manages to make him feel, yet too weary to make much of it. “What do you want me to say, Daniel? That you’re right? Of course you are, but I’ve been coping. Before you decided to stir it all up again, that is.”

 

An elegant eyebrow comes up, straight out of the Teal’c book of facial expressions. “Is burying it deep and refusing to think about it really coping?”

 

Jack is too tired for this shit. “It’s the best it’s gonna get, unless you want me out of the fight permanently.” He tries on a glare and doesn’t even really manage that. Fuck he’s losing his edge if one sleepless night reduces him to _this_. “I’m only talking about it now because you’re a nosy bastard who won’t leave well enough alone.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“What, for being a nosy bastard? A few years too late for that, buddy.”

 

“No, _I’m sorry_.” Daniel finally looks up from his in-depth study of the coffee, eyes that have never been bluer brimming with intensity. “I’m sorry I didn’t help you. I’m sorry you had to go through something that no one, _no one_ should ever have to endure. I’m sorry I didn’t tear Ba’al apart before he did that to you.”

 

Jack freezes.

 

In between, waiting for Ba’al to kill him again, Jack had concocted increasingly elaborate fantasies about getting out of that prison. Daniel waving his hand to put the gravity in his cell back to rights. Daniel with blazing eyes striking the Jaffa with lightning. Daniel tearing Ba’al apart until there isn’t so much as a flake of ash left, eviscerating him. Daniel returning him to the SGC. Daniel _staying_ , after. (That one had hurt the most and he’d only dreamed it once before shutting that line of thinking straight down. Some disappointments just shouldn’t be invited.) Not one of these scenarios featured Jack himself as the agent of his escape – even his subconscious had known that there was shit all he could to help himself. He had been so helpless he hadn’t even managed to dream about breaking himself out. Go figure. Welcome to Jack O’Neill’s worst nightmare.

 

“Yeah, me too.” His voice is hoarse. “Of all the times to start following the rules, eh?”

 

He isn’t even aware that he’s rubbing his breastbone, Ba’al’s favourite spot to target with knives, acid and whatever else the son of a bitch could think of (and the snake had got damn creative all right), until Daniel’s hand encloses his own. Daniel’s fingers are very warm.

 

“And then I broke those same rules for Abydos.” A smile slashes its way across his face, painful and sharp. “What must you have thought?”

 

It’s an effort to keep his voice light, O’Neill dry. “Don’t worry, I understand the maths. One person doesn’t amount to much compared to a whole planet of people.”

 

One corner of Daniel’s mouth lifts, a little crooked, a little sad. “Logically, I know you do. You’ve made those calls before and I don’t think I ever fully appreciated what it must have cost you. But _personally_ , Jack? You’ve always been about the individual more than anything else. No one gets left behind, remember? You taught the entire SGC that.” He shakes his head. “At any rate, that’s not a calculation I actually _made_. Your torture pushed me close to the edge – Anubis’ attack on Abydos simply tilted me over it. If you hadn’t escaped when you did, it might’ve happened earlier.”

 

Jack could ask now. The one thing he’d always wondered about, he could ask now. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to know if Daniel didn’t have a hand in his escape after all.

 

“Hands-off observer role not agreeing with you then?”

 

“Not hardly,” Daniel snorts. His fingers are still holding onto Jack’s, right there over his heart, where there should be a mess of scars but the sarcophagus only left unblemished skin. Jack hasn’t even really noticed – a comfortable familiarity even though they haven’t really done this in the past. Not so openly.

 

Daniel seems to have no intention of moving. In fact, he’s got his ‘digging in for the long haul’ expression on, the one that’s usually aimed at dusty temples and indecipherable squiggles, not Jack.

 

“Did you know ascended beings can… see souls, for lack of a better term?”

 

Jack’s eyes narrow at the sudden shift in topic. Daniel is always at his most dangerous when his mind flits from one thing to the next, all seemingly unconnected until he hits you over the head with the focal point that brings everything together.

 

The clock ticks twice before Jack catches up.

 

“You rummaged around in my _head_?”

 

Daniel winces. “I didn’t read your thoughts or anything like that, all I got was a few scattered impressions. I was trying to shield you from some of the damage Ba’al and that fucking sarcophagus were inflicting.” A hint of embarrassment leaks into his voice, as if Daniel can’t quite believe what’s about to come out of his mouth. “I didn’t… I didn’t realise just how intimate a thing it would be.”

 

On second thought, it’s Jack who can’t believe what just came out of Daniel’s mouth, and shouldn’t he be used to _that_ feeling by now. Hysterical laughter bubbles in Jack’s throat. Yet one more way in which Daniel had witnessed Jack break. Yet one more way in which the man Jack loves knows him better than anyone else ever could, and not in the fun, romantic way that Jack sometimes can’t help entertaining a stray wistful thought about.

 

Something must’ve shown on his face, or maybe Daniel really just does know him too well, for his face softens along with his voice. “You didn’t break, Jack.”

 

The refrigerator’s chill has turned from pleasant to little pinpricks of ice. Daniel’s hand forgotten, Jack shoves away from the cold, from the kitchen, from Daniel’s too-knowing eyes, but there’s nowhere to go. Through the patio doors the outside looks tranquil, grass and trees and green. Fake.

 

Jack’s voice is barely more than a whisper. “Like hell I didn’t, Daniel. I wanted to die, no matter the consequences for anyone around me and I was about to tell Ba’al exactly what he wanted to hear.”

 

“But you didn’t.”

 

Jack whirls around, all attempts at distance forgotten as he stabs a finger in Daniel’s direction. Anger’s heat prickles along his chilled back, fading again as quickly as it had roared. “The next possible chance I would have! That isn’t not breaking, that’s _luck_. Everyone has a breaking point – anyone who thinks differently is either naive or self-deluded. I found mine. That’s all there is to it.”

 

“Fine, so you broke.” Daniel’s face is pinched, and he looks like he’s only just restraining himself from throwing his arms in the air. “But you’re picking up the pieces. Your friends are picking up the pieces with you. Because we want to help you, because we love you. And you know what else I learned, during that time? You love me too, Jack. I felt your love for me, as real as anything I’ve ever known.”

 

Well, isn’t that just a bucket of ice water dumped on this already freezing heap of an unwanted conversation. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d expected the conversation to make it here, after Daniel brought up that soul thing, but the rest of him had practised denial as well as any river in Egypt. Only years of practice allow him to shrug off the threatening paralysis, to keep his tone casual.

 

“I’ve been in love with you for years, Daniel. You know this. Nothing has changed.”

 

But Daniel is shaking his head. “I didn’t know it like this. And besides, I’d convinced myself I was just reading too much into... you weren’t exactly obvious about it. But once I remembered – I can’t ignore this. It’d be like asking me to swear blind that the earth is flat.”

 

“People got away with that for centuries,” Jack says flatly. “Some nutters _still_ believe it.”

 

Daniel winces. “Bad example.”

 

“Now you’re just stealing my lines.”

 

Daniel, who has always had a fine sense for the ironic, halts any further words by stepping forward so swiftly and determinedly Jack only just stops himself from throwing an instinctive elbow, gets right up in Jack’s personal space. For all that, the kiss is surprisingly sweet.

 

Well, that’s one way to make a point.

 

When Daniel finally draws back again, more for want of air than anything else Jack muzzily reckons, he can feel himself slump, folding together now that there’s someone else who can take his weight. Shouldn’t have to, ever, but _can_. Daniel’s strong arms catch him just like Jack knew they would and he lets his head sink onto a convenient shoulder.

 

It’s been a long time since he’s had a hug that lasted longer than a few seconds.

 

“You’re hot,” Daniel says, frown colouring his voice.

 

Jack sighs, works the muscles in his back to straighten, accepts that the momentary respite is over. “Thanks, Danny. It’s only taken you six years to notice.”

 

“Not my fault you hide your assets under baggy clothes all the time.”

 

Despite the joking tone of his voice, Daniel is still drawing back, eyes scanning Jack as if looking for hidden injuries.

 

“I’m fine,” Jack sighs. “Just tired. Us old people need our beauty sleep.”

 

Daniel still looks dubious, but he only says, “Come on, let’s get you into bed then.”

 

Jack raises an eyebrow and delightfully, even to his increasingly hazy mind, a light flush appears on Daniel’s face.

 

“To _sleep_ , Jack. My presence is optional.”

 

The reaction is knee-jerk. “Never.” At Daniel’s cocked head, he elaborates, “Your presence is never optional, just sometimes beyond my influence.”

 

He hasn’t seen this quiet, bashful smile on Daniel’s face for years. It feels like a victory. But when Daniel tugs on his arm to get him moving towards the bedroom, he nonetheless digs his heels in.

 

“I tried the whole sleeping thing, didn’t go so well.”

 

It’s far too late now to try and disguise his obvious weariness (equines and barn doors, equines and barn doors), which is likely why Daniel seems willing to match Jack’s stubbornness and then some. In the ensuing glare-off Jack isn’t exactly putting up his best fight either. Then Daniel says, oh so quietly, “I’ll be there every time you wake,” and Jack folds like a particularly badly constructed card tower.

 

He hadn’t bothered to change out of his pyjamas and finds himself hustled into bed in impressively short order. Daniel has already drawn the blinds to keep out the pale outside world and when he murmurs “Good night, Jack,” Jack’s too tired to point out that it’s not anywhere near night. Blurred eyes watch Daniel move about his bedroom as if he belongs there, picking up one of Jack’s discarded paperbacks with a curious expression before settling himself against the headboard, hands cradling the book with utmost care, no matter that it’s some trashy spy thriller that Jack picked up at the airport the last time he flew commercial.

 

 

 

Jack doesn’t magically sleep for eight hours straight. He still wakes in cold sweat too often to get any true rest, but throughout it all Daniel is by his side, just like he promised, ready with soothing words and hands.

 

 

 

He properly wakes in the late afternoon, disoriented enough that only the immediate realisation that he’s in his own bedroom keeps him still. Horrific nightmares, check. Aching body, check. Head burrowed in Daniel’s waist, check? All the time waiting for that other boot to drop, this hadn’t been a scenario he’d envisaged. Might’ve been slightly more sanguine about the whole affair if he had. His mind jumps to tearing light and laughing Goa’uld. He shudders. Or maybe not.

 

“Jack?”

 

“Hmm,” he says. Not overly intelligent, maybe, but he has just realised that the nice sensation filtering down from the top of his head is Daniel’s fingers carding through his hair, and it’s all he can do not to arch his back like an old, grey cat.

 

“You managed two hours at the end there,” Daniel tells him quietly.

 

“Hmm.”

 

“Feel any more rested?”

 

“Hmm.”

 

“ _Jack_.”

 

“What?” he grumps.

 

Daniel’s voice sounds like he’s caught between a smile and a sigh. “Don’t you think there’s stuff we should talk about?”

 

“More talking?” Jack asks plaintively, voice muffled against Daniel’s pants.

 

He doesn’t really expect the protest to stop Daniel and it doesn’t. Daniel has practically made a career of going against Jack’s protests. Besides it’s Jack own damn fault for sleeping the hours away while Daniel’s brain was busy whirring away.

 

“Not about everything, not right away, but… The one thing I still don’t understand.”

 

Oooh, yes, that’s a problem. Daniel hates not understanding, it makes him go all Dr Jackson, let me ask you twenty (or a hundred) questions until I have my eureka moment all is right in my world again.

 

Jack finally cracks open an eye, turning his head slightly so he can focus on Daniel’s face. There’s a tiny frown forming between Daniel’s brows, eyes fixed in the distance, on something only he can see. “I get that ascension probably wouldn’t have been the right thing for you – ”

 

“You got that right,” Jack mutters, suddenly feeling a lot more awake, but Daniel ignores the aside with the ease of long practice.

 

“ – but you didn’t think you _could_. Why would you think that?”

 

Trust Daniel to find all the sore spots and poke at them. And yet he almost never does it maliciously, which makes it so much harder to walk away from answering. Especially when Jack is far too content with the amount of skin contact currently happening. Verbal evasions don’t work on Daniel for very long.

 

“You _know_ why. Wouldn’t pass the entrance exam for the glowy club.”

 

“But you would. You just don’t believe it.”

 

Daniel is starting to sound irritated, and an irritated Daniel inevitably leads to an irritated Jack. And a grumpy Jack, too, because irritation is threatening to prick the nice balloon of mellowness Jack has manages to get going. He sits up, dislodging Daniel’s hand from his hair.

 

“Did it ever occur to you that you might be biased here? That the rest of the world doesn’t see me like you do and you yourself are too damn forgiving by half?”

 

Daniel opens his mouth, no doubt to argue, but Jack’s on a roll now. “Daniel, anyone else would’ve walked away from my pissy ass years ago. You remember that last year before you ascended.” He pauses. “Make that two. Two years.”

 

“Yes, I do remember that year and yes that year sucked but you seem to be forgetting that it takes two people for things to get as far as they did then.” Daniel’s eyes are flashing with repressed emotions, too many for Jack to follow. “And you know what, I’m getting sick and tired of your insistence that everything is your fault while conveniently forgetting all the _good_ things you’ve done. You’ve always been there for me when I needed you, propped me up, saved my life, more times than I can remember. And you let me go when I needed you to. I knew that it was a terrible thing to ask of you, but you were the only one willing to _let me go_.” Daniel’s voice has dropped to a whisper. “I’ve never once felt unsafe with you, Jack.”

 

There’s a long pause. What can Jack possibly say to that?

 

“Always did say you have a bit of a screw loose, Dr Jackson. For someone so smart.”

 

And Daniel, bless his oversized, Jack O’Neill-translating mind, gets it.

 

“Matched pair we are, huh?” he says, smile in his voice and on his face and Jack doesn’t even try to hide the sudden wash of fondness.

 

Reaching over, Jack grasps Daniel’s shoulder and pushes. Daniel rolls his eyes, but goes willingly enough until they’re both lying on the bed, side by side, and Jack can feel the rising of Daniel’s chest with each breath. He moves a little closer, sticks his cold nose in the nape of Daniel’s neck, where soft hair meets smooth skin, purely to hear the muted yelp.

 

Daniel starts to laugh. Jack’s eyebrows twitch, wondering when cold noses on warm necks had become funny, but then Daniel says, in between giggles that may be shading a tad towards hysterical, “Years of avoiding these conversations and here we are, having them all at once.”

 

“Sounds like us,” Jack mumbles, not all that interested in philosophy on a few hours of restless sleep and with his face half buried in Daniel’s neck.

 

A distant part of his mind knows that they’re not done talking about this, _them_ , but right this moment Jack is too comfortable to dwell on it. Later, Jack will have to put himself back together again, step by step until he can meet duty unflinching.

 

Later, Daniel will be there with him still.


End file.
